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Americans Want Different Type of President
Next Time, Poll SaysBloomberg
December 3, 2005

Dec. 3 (Bloomberg) -- Three in five Americans want the next U.S. president
to be completely different from incumbent George W. Bush, according to a poll
by Time magazine.

Bush's policies in Iraq and high gasoline and energy prices had a ``very
negative'' effect on his overall job rating for 45 percent of respondents,
according to the poll, conducted between Nov. 29 and Dec. 1. The results showed
36 percent would like the next president to have policies similar to those of
Bush, compared with 60 percent who want a different type of leader.

The findings indicate Bush is failing to reverse flagging approval ratings
after laying out his strategy for Iraq in a Nov. 30 speech. The poll showed 41
percent approve of the job Bush is doing while 53 percent disapprove, little
changed from results in September after Hurricane Katrina hit the U.S. Gulf
Coast. Of those who disapprove, 76 percent said they were unlikely to change
their opinion of Bush.

Bush said in the Nov. 30 speech that he would set no timetable for the
withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. Training and equipping Iraqi forces to
take over their country's security is crucial to U.S. success in the conflict
and will strike a blow against terrorism, Bush said in the speech at the U.S.
Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.

In the Time poll, 47 percent of respondents said the U.S. should withdraw
most troops from Iraq in the next 12 months, while 40 percent said they should
stay until the Iraqi government is stable. A majority, 56 percent, said it was
very likely or somewhat likely the Iraqi government would build a stable
democracy, compared with 37 percent who said it was not very likely or not at
all likely.

Handling of Iraq

Bush won approval for his handling of Iraq from 38 percent of those surveyed
compared with 60 percent who disapproved. The respondents were nearly split on
Bush's handling of the war on terrorism, with 49 percent saying they approve
and 48 percent saying they disapprove.

Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have assailed critics who accused the
administration of misleading Americans on pre-war intelligence. In the poll, 48
percent said they think Bush deliberately misled to build the case for war
while 45 percent said he was truthful.

Half of those polled said the U.S. was wrong to go to war, and 51 percent
said the country's actions in Iraq have worsened the danger of terrorist
attacks against the U.S. Forty four percent say going to war was right, and 41
percent said the U.S. is safer. The poll also showed that a majority of
Americans, 60 percent, think the country is heading in the wrong direction.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's earned the highest approval rating, 53
percent, of anyone in the Bush administration.

The poll is based on telephone interviews with a national sample of 1,004
adults, and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

To contact the reporter on this story:
Jim Efstathiou Jr. in Washington at jefstathiou@bloomberg.net.